TORONTO -- There he is, the Kevin Gausman who can change the Blue Jays’ season.
We’ve seen this man before in 2022-’23, one of the best pitchers in the American League who is capable of not just giving his team a chance to win, but winning the game all by himself. Wednesday night’s 14-0 win over the Padres, the Blue Jays’ second shutout win in a row, looked like it would belong entirely to Gausman, who kept this game on a tee long enough for his lineup to launch.
The seven scoreless innings with nine strikeouts made this one of the best starts of Gausman’s season, and the eye test only furthered that. This was Gausman at his very best, turning every at-bat into his type of at-bat while the Padres’ hitters struggled to come close, let alone make contact.
“For us to go out there and score [more than] two touchdowns was pretty crazy,” Gausman said. “Because early on, it was a pitchers’ duel. … It was really nice to see those guys string some things together.”
It felt like an early balk brought out a little extra edge from Gausman, too. After a Luis Arraez double in the first, the called balk sent Arraez to third, and Gausman immediately turned to the umpire to plead his case. John Schneider might have set a managerial sprint speed record coming from the dugout, eager to keep his veteran starter in the game, but by the time the game resumed, Gausman had some extra conviction behind his pitches. When he got Jackson Merrill swinging through a beautiful splitter to end the inning, his twirl off the mound came with an extra skip and a punch of the glove.
The Blue Jays are .500 now, but it feels like they’ve touched .500 once a week before taking two steps backward. The American League -- even the mighty East -- is tight in 2025. The margins are so thin, and it will surely stay that way through the Trade Deadline and postseason race, so the difference between the good and great versions of Gausman could change this club’s trajectory completely.
“If he can do that, that’s big. You think back to a few years ago where he was that [almost] every night out,” Schneider said. “He still has the ability to be that, I think. Hopefully, this is something he can build on, but if he can be that again? We’re trying to piece together one game every time through the rotation, so that would be a big, stabilizing force for us.”
Gausman can’t score the runs himself, of course. Nathan Lukes was Wednesday’s first co-star, launching a two-run shot to right field in the bottom of the fifth to break the tie. For the second night in a row, the Blue Jays won the pitchers' duel with power, such a refreshing way to win after so many weeks spent chasing it.
Lukes is this roster’s best example of what a confident baseball player looks like. It’s why, in his next at-bat, Schneider was comfortable asking Lukes to lay down a bunt with two strikes … and he nailed it.
It felt like that would be all the Blue Jays needed, but then this offense erupted for 12 late runs, five in the seventh and seven in the eighth. The Padres helped by playing some abysmal defense, but the Blue Jays just kept piling on and highlighted the onslaught with Daulton Varsho’s grand slam in the bottom of the eighth. The end result was the most dominant all-around performance of the Blue Jays’ season.
“That was the Blue Jays,” Lukes said. “That was the lineup, and those were the hitters that we are.”
Wednesday’s win was the best of everything all at once, a dominant pitching performance paired with the best offensive output of the season. On any other day, the Blue Jays should be able to win most games with just one of those things.
Gausman doing what he did against the Padres is the straightest, simplest path to stealing a few games along the way. We know the Blue Jays can play .500 baseball. There’s a strange, magnetic attraction between them and the .500 mark, but Gausman finally looks like his best self again, a pitcher who can drag them to the other side.